NCJ Number
83297
Date Published
Unknown
Length
0 pages
Annotation
A neighborhood anticrime project director delineates procedures and techniques for effectively organizing a community crime prevention program, with attention to the community organizer's and local residents' roles in the process.
Abstract
In planning a local crime prevention program, the community organizer should first assess neighborhood characteristics, including the area's crime statistics, its demographics, social and economic conditions, physical structures, and resident attitudes. This analysis should yield a preliminary listing of priority needs to be addressed by the program. Priority selection, however, should reflect residents' perceptions of their most pressing problems, even if these are contradicted by data analysis. Balancing of program and citizen priorities should be done through short-and long-range program components and combinations of broad-based and targeted goals. Program strategies should be selected in view of causal factors behind the neighborhood crime problems. Citizen insistance on increased law enforcement for minor issues (i.e., loitering) should be countered with patience and progran efforts to rectify the problem (i.e., providing trash cans and access to toilets for neighborhood youths may well make their 'hanging around' appear less destructive and objectionable). Disgruntled citizens must be guided toward attitude changes through recognition of environmental crime causes and positive steps to ameliorate them. During meetings participants should be allowed to express themselves but not to digress from the agenda topic. Programs must also cultivate police cooperation and understand the reasons for police resistance to program intervention. Program attempts to monitor police responses should be carefully documented. For further discussion of community organizing, see NCJ 83296.